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American History

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How Imperial Japan Enslaved Up to 200,000 Women — Then Burned the Evidence
Featured · Long Read

How Imperial Japan Enslaved Up to 200,000 Women — Then Burned the Evidence

Beginning in Shanghai in 1932 and expanding across Asia, Imperial Japan's military ran a vast comfort women system that enslaved up to 200,000 women — and officials burned the evidence the day…

Lincoln Had Almost No Navy in 1861 — So He Overruled His Own Admirals
American History

Lincoln Had Almost No Navy in 1861 — So He Overruled His Own Admirals

Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861 with fewer than ninety ships and a 3,500-mile Confederate coastline to blockade. What followed…

Truman Fired His Most Famous General at 3 a.m. — and America Nearly Revolted
American History

Truman Fired His Most Famous General at 3 a.m. — and America Nearly Revolted

Harry Truman signed the orders firing five-star General Douglas MacArthur in the middle of the night in 1951, knowing the…

The ‘Confederate Flag’ Everyone Recognizes Was Never the Nation’s Flag
American History

The ‘Confederate Flag’ Everyone Recognizes Was Never the Nation’s Flag

The flag most Americans call the Confederate flag was never the Confederacy's national banner — it was a general's emergency…

The Korean War Armistice of 1953 Froze a Conflict That Never Legally Ended
American History

The Korean War Armistice of 1953 Froze a Conflict That Never Legally Ended

The guns fell silent in 1953, but the Korean War never legally ended — the result of a hasty line…

Vietnam Had Already Fought 30 Years Before U.S. Troops Arrived
American History

Vietnam Had Already Fought 30 Years Before U.S. Troops Arrived

Most Americans place the start of the Vietnam War somewhere around the Gulf of Tonkin — but that's roughly thirty…

Scarlett O’Hara’s Real Inspiration Hated Gone with the Wind’s Lost Cause Lies
American History

Scarlett O’Hara’s Real Inspiration Hated Gone with the Wind’s Lost Cause Lies

Margaret Mitchell based Scarlett O'Hara on her sharp-tongued grandmother Annie Fitzgerald Stephens — a woman who reportedly despised the result.…

Howard Hughes Secretly Planned the Spruce Goose’s One and Only Flight
American History

Howard Hughes Secretly Planned the Spruce Goose’s One and Only Flight

On November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes opened the throttle on eight engines and lifted the H-4 Hercules — the largest…

Americans Were Dying in Vietnam a Full Decade Before the War ‘Began’
American History

Americans Were Dying in Vietnam a Full Decade Before the War ‘Began’

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the 1965 Marine landings at Da Nang dominate the textbooks, but Americans were already…

Gary Gallagher Spent 40 Years Proving the Lost Cause Is a Lie
American History

Gary Gallagher Spent 40 Years Proving the Lost Cause Is a Lie

For four decades, Civil War historian Gary Gallagher has methodically dismantled the Lost Cause narrative — the postwar Southern myth…

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